306 ANNUAL REPORTS OF DEPARTMENT OF AGTMCULTURE. 



It would also be desirable to provide the field agent in each State 

 with a clerk to assist in folding and mailing schedules of inquiry, 

 opening and tabulating returns, and in handling correspondence and 

 other necessary office work, so as to relieve the field agents of the 

 burden of routine details and leave them free to devote their entire 

 time to the more important and difficult work of studying, analyzing, 

 estimating, and forecasting crop conditions and prospects. 



Field agents should be supplied with automobiles. Crop estimates 

 can not be made entirely from written reports of correspondents, nor 

 can the field agent judge of the condition and probable yield of a 

 crop from the fleeting glance he gets through a car window when 

 speeding across the country between cities and towns. During the 

 growing season, especially at critical periods in the life history of a 

 crop, field agents must get out in the fields and examine individual 

 plants. The greater the number of fields examined the more accurate 

 will be the field agent's judgment of the extent of damage from vari- 

 ous causes. At the present time field agents travel from town to 

 town by rail or trolley, and at each point it is usually necessary to 

 hire a conveyance to go out in the country. Trains run at irregular 

 intervals, and it is often difficult to obtain a conveyance at stopping 

 points. The agent can inspect only a small territory in the vicinity 

 of a town and often loses much time waiting for trains. The use 

 of automobiles by agents would obviate many of these difficulties, and 

 by enabling the field agent to visit crop-producing areas not readily 

 •accessible by railway, with power to stop at any point en route to ex- 

 amine particular fields, would increase the efficiency and dependa- 

 bility of the service many fold. 



It is highly desirable also that the clerical force in Washington 

 should be increased in order to handle properly the increased number 

 of returns from the field force and to meet the increasing demands 

 which are constantly being made upon the bureau for special in- 

 vestigations. Irrespective of whether the field force is increased, the 

 desirability of a substantial increase in the clerical force of the 

 bureau is becoming more and more apparent. During the past 

 decade the volume of work to be done has nearly doubled and is 

 likely to increase as the agriculture of the country develops and as 

 interest grows in the production and consumption of agricultural 

 products. The public demand for estimates of crop and live-stock 

 production and supplies of food and feed, farm help, seed, fertilizer, 

 farm machinery, and other factors relating to the present and future 

 food supply, has been constant and insistent since the beginning of 

 the European War. This demand has been relatively greater than 

 the increase in the clerical and field force authorized JDy Congress in 

 the past few years. The fact that the crop-reporting service has 

 been able to meet the increasing demands upon it with its present 

 inadequate force is due largely to the cooperation of public-spirited 

 men in every community who serve as voluntary crop reporters with- 

 out monetary compensation, and to the loyal and efficient service 

 of employees in the field and in the Washington office, who cheer- 

 fully work more than the customary office hours and on Sundays and 

 legal holidays when necessary to tabulate returns in order to get the 

 crop reports out promptly. 



